thomas_m@WUMS2.WUSTL.EDU (Matthew L. Thomas) (05/01/91)
This is a followup post vering the question I posted earlier concerning the hard drive problem we were having here at work. To briefly summarize the problem, the hard drive would not always spin up when the computer was powered up. It seemed to "stick" in one place until I would tap on the side of the computer, and it would then spin up normally. I would like to thank everyone who took the time to respond to my question as the information was very helpful and informative. Here are some blurbs from the responses that I received which should explain the problem fairly well. In one response, gort@cup.portal.com writes: your sony hard drive prob sounds much like the same problem experienced by many quantum 40's. it's called "stiction" and has to do with lubrication which allows the arm on which the read heads reside are not getting properly distributed. One way to fix this is to regularly exercise the arm by accessing all the sectors on the drive. Utilities like Norton or SUM, which have programs to check the disk for bad sectors, will work nicely. Quantum solved the problem by incorporating new roms that periodically exercised the arm automatically. You might want to check with the vendor re rom upgrades, or just exercise it yourself using the above method. Dave Platt, dplatt@ntg.com, writes: Sounds like stiction... either the bearings are getting sticky, or one of the heads is sticking to one of the platters. I've heard that this has been a problem with the Sony 40-meg drives. I don't think there's any really good cure for the problem, other than a complete teardown and rebuilding of the affected disk (more expensive than it's worth). You may want to consider leaving the IIcx powered up at all times, and just turning off the monitor. On a more dangerous note, Matthew T. Russotto, russotto@eng.umd.edu, writes: The problem is known as stiction, and it seems to be rather common with 40 and 80 MB Sony 3.5" drives. What happens is the drive head literally adheres to the platter, requiring a larger-than-normal force to start the drive. As far as I know, there is nothing you can do about it. The problem can damage your power supply, or at least it did in one SE that I know of. These three blurbs pretty much summarized what most everyone said about the problem. One person stated that they had just replaced a Sony 40Mb for the same problem with an 80 Mb and recommended either leaving the computer on all the time or, like he did, replacing the hard drive. Now I guess I'm singin' the stiction blues. I don't think that we will be replacing the drive anytime soon... The best solution for us right now seems to be leaving the computer on all the time.